"The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." - George Washington

Thursday, September 15, 2016

The U.S. House may choose the U.S. President

A procedure that has been in the U.S. Constitution since 1804 and only used once since then is likely to be used this year, due to a special set of circumstances that very rarely shows up in American politics.

Because this procedure is in the Constitution, it cannot be voided by any law that is passed by Congress. Any such law, called a statute, that conflicts with the Constitution, in the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, is itself voided.

The website of the National Archives says that this amendment superceded part of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. That means that part of Article II, Section 1 has been voided and is no longer a valid part of the U.S. legal system.

When the 12th amendment was passed, it was in the form of one very long paragraph. I'm going to divide it up into three parts because some of the sentences in this amendment were voided by part of the 20th Amendment.

On this blog page, I have referred to the voided part of this amendment as "Part 2" of this amendment. Every other sentence in this amendment, which I refer to as "Part 1" and "Part 3" is still legally valid as a fully-ratified and functional amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Part 1

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.

Part 2 (superceded by Section 3 of the 20th Amendment)

And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.

Part 3

The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Grammatical analysis of the relevant Text

Most of Part 1 of the text of the 12th Amendment describes the operation of the Electoral College, including this sentence. "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;"

The next sentence, however, is grammatically complex. Here it is.

"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

There are two main clauses in this sentence, and both of them are in the form of an if-then statement. An if-then statement allows for an action to be taken if a certain condition is met. The two main clauses differ from each other. One specifies a procedure that will be followed if one presidential candidate receives a majority of all of the votes of the appointed Electors (members of the Electoral College). The other clause specifies a procedure that will be followed if none of the presidential candidates receives a majority of those votes.

This is the text of that second clause, copied directly from the amendment.

"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

If no person have such majority,

then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the
list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall
choose immediately, by ballot, the President.

The conditional action is that the U.S. House will choose the president. The condition that allows this to happen is none of the presidential candidates having a majority of the votes of the Electoral College.

There are three further restrictions on the voting by the House. They can only consider the three candidates who received the most number of popular votes, and they must vote by ballot. They cannot announce their vote by speaking their choices or by raising their hands, and they must vote immediately. They are not allowed to begin a campaign for their favorite candidate that will take weeks or months to complete.

That second if-then clause is very interesting, because it was followed during one election in U.S history, and I believe that this special procedure will be followed again this year.

That second clause is also interesting because the polling that is being done that includes the top four presidential candidates shows that none of them is close to having a majority. A website called Real Clear Politics mentions these polls. The results of this four-person polling is explained later on this page.

The Electoral College

Early history

It was established by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and modified by the 12th Amendment. When the 20th Amendment was ratified, it modified how this "institution" operates even further, but the institution itself still functions, with a slightly modified operation.

The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.

Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors
and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.

This is the first sentence in the third paragraph. "The Electoral College consists of 538 electors."

These are the first two paragraphs of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. These words have not been voided or modified by any amendment.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The 10th Amendment states that

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In this case, however, it was not necessary to give a power to the states by default. Article II, Section 1 explicitly said that the states have the power to choose their own electors, and there are only two limits on their power. This section determines how many electors there are, and it states that Electors cannot be a current Senator or Representative, or any other person holding an office of trust or profit. Any other person can be chosen by a state to be someone who casts a direct vote for the President of the United States.

The number of the Electors has gone up along with the number of the people who are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, but no matter how many people there are in the Electoral College, the Constitution requires that the President must be the person who has at least half of their votes.

During almost all of the previous elections in this country, one presidential candidate had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. A majority is half of the total, plus one if the number of members is an even number. Half of 538 is 269. but 538 is an even number, so a majority of that group would be 270.

The electors only perform one function, and they only do this once every four years. They vote directly for a combination of a President and a Vice-President. Their vote determines which combination will have all the executive power of the White House and all of the military power of the United States Commander-in-Chief. Most of the time, one candidate duo will have a majority of their votes, but if none of the presidential candidates have a majority of their votes, then under the terms of the 12th Amendment, the official members of the U.S. House of Representatives will make an immediate vote, without any time for campaigning.

The immediate vote process was explained earlier in the section about the 12th Amendment.

The 20th Amendment

This amendment was passed by Congress in March 1932 and was ratified by the states in January 1933, according to this page on the website of the National Constitution Center. It has six sections. The third section, whose text is on the page linked above, does modify what I refer to as "Part 2" of the 12th Amendment, but not "Part 1", which includes the process for choosing a president if none of the candidates has a majority of the Electoral College votes.

As I said earlier, one election very early in American history followed the special procedure in the 12th Amendment that allows for the president to be chosen by a vote of the members of the U.S. House.

The 1824 election

In all of America's history, this second clause was used only once, because only one American presidential election (up until now) featured candidates who were close competitors to each other on Election Day. These are the first three paragraphs of this page on the History Channel website.

As no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States.

In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president. Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election. On December 1, 1824, the results were announced. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won 99 electoral and 153,544 popular votes; John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts received 84 electoral and 108,740 popular votes; Secretary of State William H. Crawford, who had suffered a stroke before the election, received 41 electoral votes; and Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky won 37 electoral votes.

As dictated by the U.S. Constitution, the presidential election was then turned over to the House of Representatives. The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House.

This is the last sentence of the third paragraph of the History Channel page.

"The 12th Amendment states that if no electoral majority is won, only the three candidates who receive the most popular votes will be considered in the House."

This is another copy of the text of that second clause in the 12th Amendment.

"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

In 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives chose the person with the 2nd highest number of Electoral College votes, John Quincy Adams.

The electoral results in 1824

These are the electoral votes that were recorded in 1824 and the first two sentences of the second paragraph of the History Channel website.

Andrew Jackson

99

John Quincy Adams

84

William H. Crawford

41

Henry Clay

37

"In the 1824 election, 131 electoral votes, just over half of the 261 total, were necessary to elect a candidate president.

Although it had no bearing on the outcome of the election, popular votes were counted for the first time in this election."

In 1824, there were 261 people in the Electoral College. That number is now 538.

As you can see, none of the four candidates received the necessary 131 electoral votes to be President under the conditions of the first clause of this amendment. The candidate who had the most votes didn't even get 100 votes, but 131 votes were necessary because that was "half-plus-one" of the total votes in the Electoral College.

Here is the text of the first clause of that very important sentence in the 12th Amendment.

"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed ...."

The 1824 election had four presidential candidates. None of them had a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. 131 votes was a majority in that year, but the person who had the most Electoral College votes only got 99 Electoral College votes.

The reason why none of the presidential candidates received a majority of the Electoral College votes is interesting to historians. I will summarize the history of that election by saying that all four of these men were close competitors to each other.

It is also interesting to note that Andrew Jackson, the candidate who got the most Electoral College votes the first time they voted, was not the ultimate winner that year. During the voting by members of the U.S. House, they chose the 2nd place finisher, John Quincy Adams, to be the President.

Summary of the 12th Amendment

It is the process that officially chooses the U.S. President. Part of this process is a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to select a president if a certain condition is met. That condition is a lack of a majority vote by any of the presidential candidates, which can be thought of as a lack of support for any one presidential candidate over another presidential candidate.

The 2016 election

The current poll results

In 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are also close competitors to each other, but they are not the only candidates who will be on ballots in November.

As of August 15, 2016, a total of 1,840 candidates had filed a Statement of Candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.[1] A full list of these candidates and their parties and filing dates can be found here.

The top of this page mentions four major party candidates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson. Remember, there were four candidates in 1824 also.

As of late August, less than one percentage point separated the Republican nominee from the Democrat nominee in this "tracking poll", which samples the same group of 3,000 eligible voters over a long time period.

Donald Trump trails Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by only 3 percentage points in a new national poll from Morning Consult, shrinking a deficit that has alarmed GOP operatives who fear their unconventional nominee may harm the prospects of other Republican candidates on the ballot this fall.

In a survey taken Aug. 24 through Aug. 26, Trump halved the 6-point distance between himself and Clinton from the previous week’s poll. In the most recent head-to-head matchup, 43 percent of registered voters say they will vote for Clinton, and 40 percent say they will vote for Trump; 17 percent don’t know or have no opinion.

This is the second sentence of the second paragraph

"In the most recent head-to-head matchup, 43 percent of registered voters say they will vote for Clinton, and 40 percent say they will vote for Trump; 17 percent don’t know or have no opinion."

I don't believe this writer. I think that third group of voters, 17% of the total, who are described by the writer as "don't know or have no opinion", do have an opinion which the writer does not wish to mention. Their opinion is that they don't like Hillary or Donald and will instead vote for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin, or someone else.

The average poll results, according to the Real Clear Politics website, on the day that this blog page was published, show that Hillary and Donald are very close competitors. She received an average of 42.0% of the polling support and Donald received an average of 40.9% of the polling support. The difference is 1.1%. Her polling margin was higher two days ago.

The nominees of the Democrat Party and the Republican Party are both highly unpopular with voters, but they are equally unpopular. That means that they are both losing support to the candidates of other parties, including the Libertarian Party, whose presidential candidate is Gary Johnson, the Green Party, whose candidate is Jill Stein, and Evan McMullin, who was a Republican but is now an independent candidate, not a registered Republican or Democrat. This August 8, 2016 Politico article has more information about him.

According to that same page of the Real Clear Politics website, Gary Johnson has 8.3% of the vote, and Jill Stein has 2.7% of the vote.

Third-party candidates, especially former Governor Gary Johnson, have more support in 2016 than they have received in many other elections because so many Democrats dislike Hillary and so many Republicans dislike Donald.

The headline of this September 14, 2016 Wall Street Journal story is "Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson to Appear on Election Ballots in All 50 States". The sub-headline of the same story is "No third-party presidential ticket has qualified for all 50 state ballots since 1996".

Here are the first two paragraphs of that story. All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s campaign said Tuesday that he will be on the ballot in all 50 states
plus the District of Columbia, marking the first time in two decades a third-party presidential ticket has appeared on every state ballot.

“With a majority of Americans wanting a choice other than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, today we now know for certain that on Election Day, every voter in America will have that alternative option,” Mr. Johnson said.

The story in a major-city newspaper

If you think 2016 will stop being weird come Nov. 8, please look at your calendars: This whole election process actually lasts almost an additional two months beyond that, finally ending when Congress counts the electoral votes in early January. But just because it's been a weird year, that doesn't mean it has to end badly. There's reason to hope.

Consider independent write-in candidate for president Evan McMullin. He has virtually no chance of winning the election on Nov. 8, but he does have a shot at becoming president by the end of December.

It's a long shot. Very long. But if Mr. McMullin managed the greatest upset of all time, it would be a very good thing, and not just because so many of us would rather see someone other than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the White House.

If the vote in November agrees with the current poll results

The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says how the Electoral College operates. This is the actual process that will formally choose the next President of the United States. If one candidate can get more than 50% of the votes of the members of the Electoral College, then the first part of this grammatically complex sentence will be used to formally and legally declare the winner of the 2016 presidential race.

"The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed ...."

However, if Hillary and Donald both receive less than 50% of the votes of the members of the Electoral College, which is likely, given the current poll results for the polls that have four names in them, then the second part of the last grammatically complex sentence that I quoted earlier in this essay will be implemented.

"... and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

A likely set of events in November

On the day that this essay is being published, it is likely that neither Hillary nor Donald will receive more than 50% of the popular votes.

It is therefore likely that the U.S. House of Representatives will vote for the next President. Each member of that legislative body will receive one vote. U.S. Representative Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House and will therefore be in command of the process.

According to the 12th Amendment, the members of the Electoral college can vote for any of the three candidates that received the most votes. Even though there are two major political parties in this country, and even though every president up until now was a member of one of the two major parties, those "electors" could legally choose a candidate from a minor party and make that person the next President.

On the day that this essay is published, Gary Johnson, the former Governor of New Mexico, is in 3rd place among the presidential candidates. He is likely to be the 3rd person who is eligible to be the next President if the House of Representatives makes the selection.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate, could be the next President!

I don't want him to be President, but the Constitutional process that selects the President allows this to happen.

My preferred outcome

There are several ways that this could happen. The Republican National Committee has several rules that determine the allowable actions of their members, including their Presidential Candidates. If they decide that Donald Trump has violated their rules, they have the legal ability to withdraw his name from the November ballot and to substitute another name.

It's also possible that a large percentage of America could write the name "Ted Cruz" onto their ballots. That is what I myself will do in November, with the approval of the U.S. Constitution and my town hall.

It's also possible that health problems, business problems (like a lawsuit against Trump University) or a hidden personal scandal, could force 70-year-old Donald Trump to drop out. He could even drop dead from a heart attack, a stroke, or because of a violent act committed by the hate group Black Lives Matter, which has already murdered police officers in several states and which continues to threaten to murder more police officers.

Face the facts, please

The head-to-head polls are unimportant

As long as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are getting significantly less than 50% support in national four-person polls, then a procedure in the 12th Amendment, only used once in American history, is likely to be used this year.

As of this publication date, Hillary was 8% away from her majority and Donald was 9.1% away from his majority.

Gary Johnson could be the next president.

It's not likely, but it is possible. He is likely to be the third name that will be a candidate for votes by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Evan McMullin could be the next president.

As I showed earlier in this essay, if the U.S. House of Representatives participates in the U.S. political process by selecting the next president, they will be allowed to vote for up to three names. If Evan McMullin, a presidential candidate who is not registered in any political party, can win one state, he would be eligible to be selected.

Two percent of Utah’s likely voters support another White House hopeful, and 4 percent remain undecided.

Clinton and Trump are both deeply unpopular in the state. McMullin is seen more favorably but has less name recognition.

Please remember. In order for Evan to win the White House, he only has to meet two objectives.

Win his home state of Utah

Capitalize on the historically low popular support among Democrats for Hillary and among Republicans for Donald by asking for and then receiving the support of a majority of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives when they vote for the president under the terms of the 12th Amendment.

The Utah polls

This section was added November 1, 2016, one week before the official election day.

Four new polls by Emerson College show Hillary Clinton increasing her favorability and her support in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Missouri while, in Utah, Evan McMullin leads Donald Trump by 4 points, 31% to 27%, with Clinton taking 24%.

There are people who want political and social chaos

This group of people includes Marxists.

This is part of the text of an interview conducted with Karl Marx. The text was published in the Chicago Tribune on January 5, 1879 and reprinted on the website Marxists.org. The first paragraph is a question that was asked by a reporter whose name does not appear on the Marxist website. The full interview includes many questions and answers. The boldfaced words in the second paragraph were featured that way on the website.

“Well, then, to carry out the principles of socialism do its believers advocate assassination and bloodshed?”

“The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination,” he went on to say, “it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell. These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.”

An election that features two major-party presidential candidates who can't get close to a majority of the vote of their own party is an election that is likely to have a violent outcome.

Violence has already occurred at some of Donald Trump's rallies during the primary season.

The video on the right was uploaded to YouTube on March 12, 2016 by a British newspaper called the Telegraph.

If an individual or a group murders Donald Trump before November, another candidate would have to be chosen by the Republican National Committee, which is responsible for selecting the party's nominee in any presidential election.

Senator Cruz, who was a presidential candidate until he suspended his campaign on May 3, 2016, and who is my favorite presidential candidate, can legally return as a candidate if Donald is assassinated by any violent person or group.

It's also possible that the Republican National Committee could choose a different candidate, such as Senator Marco Rubio, Governor John Kasich, or Dr. Ben Carson. I would sleep easier with any of them being President than with Donald Trump being President, but the next President is likely to be a Republican, thanks to the actions of one Democrat who put the Republican Party in command of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.

Thank you, Barry Soetoro !

That's his legal name, because he used it when he registered to vote in 2012.

Barry Soetoro
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

"Barack Obama" is not his legal name. It is an alias, a knickname.

After that election, he said that elections have consequences.

They certainly do, Barry.

They certainly do.

It was your socialist (if not Marxist) policies that forced Americans all over the nation to vote so enthusiastically for Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.

You insisted on forcing us to accept your socialist Obamacare law, written on thousands of pages with many hidden harmful features, just like a Trojan Horse.

You insisted that Congress vote to approve it before any of them had a chance to read and understand it.

You insisted that companies owned by your political friends, including union members, must have exemptions (officially called waivers) from the harsh requirements of this law.

Let us briefly review the rapidly growing rolls of companies, unions, and states bursting out of the Obamacare escape hatch.

In early September, I noted the push by Obamacare promoter and Democrat Rep. Ron Wyden for a special state waiver from the very federal mandate he advocated for everyone else.

A few weeks later, McDonald’s finagled its own Obamacare waiver after warning federal regulators that
it could be forced to drop its affordable health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless it got a pass.

In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonald’s, but also to several other firms and labor unions.

Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance. The escapees include employers of many low-wage and part-time workers whose health insurance plans would otherwise be dropped, including Darden Restaurants — the parent company of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chains, which employ some 34,000 people.

This is the first sentence in the fourth paragraph.

"HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance."

The American people don’t want a shutdown and neither do I. I didn’t come here to shut down the government. I came here to fight for a smaller, less costly and more accountable federal government. But here we find ourselves in this moment dealing with a law that’s causing unknown consequences and unknown damage to the American people and to our economy. And that issue is ObamaCare.

For those of you who don’t recall, it was passed in the middle of the night - 2,300 pages that no one had ever read - and it’s having all types of consequences for the American people, our constituents, having all kinds of consequences for employers. And as a result, over the last year or so, last couple of years, the president has given his friends in the labor unions some 1,100 waivers to this law. This summer, the president decided, well, we’re not going to enforce the employer mandate. Big employers around the country were all upset about having to make sure they provided health care for their employees, causing big problems. The result of all this is you’ve got employers all over the country who can’t hire people, who are cutting the hours of
their workers. It’s having a devastating impact. Something has to be done.

So, my Republican colleagues and I thought we should defund the law for a year. We thought we should delay it for a year. Our friends over in the Senate don’t seem to want to go down that path. But I’m going to tell you what: this is an issue of fairness. How can we give waivers and breaks to all the big union guys out there? How do we give a break to all the big businesses out there, and yet stick our constituents with a bill that they don’t want and a bill they can’t afford? That’s what this fight’s all about.

This is the first sentence in the second paragraph.

"For those of you who don’t recall, it was passed in the middle of the night - 2,300 pages that no one had ever read - and it’s having all types of consequences for the American people, our constituents, having all kinds of consequences for employers."

Those "consequences" include the conversion of millions of full-time jobs into part-time jobs because employers must provide health benefits, at a huge cost to their budgets, for any person who works more than 30 hours per week.

Because of all this economic punishment, Americans all over the nation decided to punish Democrats again. This time, Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate in the 2014 election, so thank you, Barry.

The Democratic Party is abandoning support for the “Cadillac tax” in the healthcare reform law, leaving President Obama as one of the last defenders of the policy.

The tax on “gold-plated” insurance plans was included in ObamaCare over the furious opposition of labor unions, who warned it would cause employers to abandon generous coverage in droves.

The tax is slated to take effect in 2018, but the movement against it is growing stronger, with Democratic leaders in Congress now joining all of the party’s leading presidential candidates in supporting repeal.

President Barack Obama received a strong rebuke from the Supreme Court last week for his attempt to make appointments when Congress was still technically in session.

The 9-0 decision in National Labor Relations Board vs. Noel Canning came just as Speaker John Boehner announced plans to sue Obama for executive overreach.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who defended Boehner’s lawsuit, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was emblematic of Obama’s term. Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the "9-0 decision last week was the 13th time the Supreme Court has voted 9-0 that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority."

I’ve written exhaustively about this administration’s sheer statistical failure at the Supreme Court. It has the worst record of any modern presidency, whether you count in
absolute won-loss – where the solicitor general’s office struggles to get to 50 percent, against a historical norm of 70 percent – or by unanimous losses alone.